Backstage 25: Learning Curve
by Aadler
Summary: Experience really is the best teacher … but occasionally something quicker is needed.
1. Part 1

**Learning Curve**  
by Aadler  
**Copyright May 2006**

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Disclaimer: Characters from _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

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Part I

"I can't believe they did this," the man said. It was the third time he had said it. "What do they think this is supposed to accomplish? Why do they think I came out here in the first place? I wanted to _rest_ for awhile. Is that too much to ask?"

Leigh gave him a bleak look. "They didn't really discuss it with me. In fact, I didn't have any idea I'd be coming here until I woke up in your …" She glanced back at the small dwelling built into the side of the hill. "What is that, anyhow?"

"Shepherd's hut," the man supplied for her. "That's what the locals told me, anyhow. The idea was, a guy would come out with the flocks, stay a week or so, then move 'em to another grazing area with another hut. Probably haven't been any sheep out here in thirty, forty years, but they keep up the huts, for hikers and whatever."

"And we're the whatever," Leigh observed.

"I guess," he said, then added, "Have I mentioned that I hate this?"

"So send me back," Leigh said promptly.

"Right." He shook his head, sighed. "I really wish it was that simple, but it never is with these people. They shot you to me for a reason — and, oh yeah, you can bet they've got an agenda going with me, too — and unless we do something to satisfy 'em, they'll just pop you right back here. Or send you somewhere else, and hit me with some other kind of UNNECESSARY AND UNSOLICTED amateur therapy, and we might neither one of us like that." He sighed again. "No, better we work what we've got, and hope they'll accept it and move on. So what's your deal?"

Leigh thought about it. "You mean, what's my problem with them, or what's their problem with me?"

"Both, I guess. They're the ones who dropped this on us, so I need to know their side. You're the one I have to work with, so I need your side. Plenty of fun to go around."

"Fine," Leigh said. "They think I've got an attitude. I do. My attitude is, people who act like they know everything, either they're faking it or they've bought into their own hype. They think I don't listen. I listen. I just don't believe everything I hear. They seem to think I need to prove myself to them: show I'm good enough, meet some kind of standard they've set. I'm still waiting for them to prove to _me_ that I should pay attention to their rules."

"Mm-hmm." He pondered on that. "Where are you from?"

"Grew up in New Mexico, Santa Fe area," she told him. "Arizona for the last four years."

"Small town, mid-sized city, or big urban area?" He quirked a smile. "Now, I mean. Where you were living when they found you."

"I guess you'd consider it a suburb," Leigh said after a moment's thought. "We can get to Phoenix in forty minutes on the interstate."

"And you're, what? Fifteen?"

"I'm nineteen," she said. "Do I look fifteen?"

"I've seen Slayers younger than you who looked older than you," he said. "And they usually _are_ called young, so I was guessing down. Now —"

"Hold on a second," Leigh said. "You're getting set to pump me for my life history, but you haven't told me anything about yourself. I don't even know your name."

"Sure, yeah," he said, "I'm Xander, Xander Harris." He paused, gave her a small tilt of one eyebrow. "And, from your total non-reaction, I'm guessing you've never heard of me."

"No," Leigh answered. "But they're not big on names where the 'probationers' are concerned, it's all combat drills and conditioning runs and _'snap to, trainee!'_ "

"I think I get it," Xander said. "Basic military model, try to build a strong group identity, instill loyalty to the larger organization before they lay out all the particulars. And it sounds like that's not really your game."

"I've never been much of a joiner," Leigh said, keeping her voice flat.

He nodded. "So now they have to figure out if you're a misfit, an outlaw, or maybe something else."

Leigh looked him over. "And I'm here so you can decide that?"

"It's one guess," Xander said. "Might even be the right one. Our question is, what do _we_ do?"

Her response was a shrug. "You know these people better than I do. Whatever it takes to get them off our backs."

Xander nodded. "Works for me. Except it still leaves figuring out what would do the trick." He glanced toward her. "You hungry?"

"I could eat," Leigh agreed. "What do you have?"

"Campbell's Chunky Soups," Xander told her. "Poptop cans, don't need to add any water, I even picked the kinds that taste okay without being heated. Bachelor's delight, if you're somewhere with no fridge or microwave." He gestured toward the hut. "Which, as you can see …"

"Right," Leigh said. "Do you have any with chicken?"

"Three kinds. There should be plenty for both of us … but if not, I'm calling dibs on the chicken corn chowder."

"Flip you for it," Leigh offered levelly.

"Or I could go with sirloin burger," Xander said without an instant's pause. " 'Cause every time I get flipped, I land on my head, which makes it way too easy to call."

"Doesn't matter," Leigh said. "You can have the chowder if you want. I was just checking."

"Uh-huh." Xander gave her a quick grin. "You can forget about me trying to play Master Pai Mei, dancing on your sword till you learn the five-point palm exploding heart technique. Not my style at all."

Leigh followed him toward the hut. "So what is your style?"

"Dive for cover whenever there's a loud noise," Xander said. "Hide till it goes away. If there's no hiding place, jump around and make squawking sounds." Again the flash of a grin. "Do that enough times, they start calling you a veteran."

At the door, Leigh stopped to look back at the hills surrounding them: grass interspersed with rock crags, the occasional scrubby bush. "Where are we?" she asked. "Montana? Wyoming? I know this can't be anywhere near Cleveland, the air tastes too clean."

Xander shook his head. "They really ran a number on you, didn't they? I guess there's no knowing once they fire up the teleportation express. Sorry, wrong hemisphere." He gestured at the hills. "Welcome to Scotland."

~ – ~ – ~

Leigh had assessed him on first awakening at the hut, and now she studied him more searchingly while they ate. He was not, she realized, as tall as she had thought; his leanness lent him the illusion of added height. His hair was very dark, and looked to be growing out from having been cut quite close in the recent past; but, short as it was, it still somehow came across as unruly. His eyes were friendly and guileless, but seemed to never quite focus on her … no, it was more as if he were only half-watching her, the other eye (and some secret thoughts) directed slightly elsewhere. He had a swimmer's physique, but nothing about him said 'athlete'; in fact, there was a deceptive gawkiness to his movements and posture, and it took sharp study to realize that the apparent awkwardness was in fact perfectly comfortable to him, that he seemed clumsy without actually being so.

His tan was even, but she suspected that it was fading from a yet deeper shade. His face had a lot of laugh lines, plus a few creases that hadn't been put there by mirth. He was in his mid-twenties, she thought, and some of them had been hard years. And there was something else, something subtle, easy to overlook and shrug away but you really shouldn't …

Well. How about that? It was like looking at Hugh Grant before anybody knew who he was: this could be one deeply sexy man, only it would never occur to most people to see him in those terms.

Leigh worked her way to the bottom of the soup can, trying to picture how she must look to him. He said he'd seen Slayers before, so he knew better than to buy into surface appearance, but even so he'd tend to react to the familiar visual cues. Leigh had been told she was proportioned like a long-distance runner, meaning a bit taller and a bit more slender than the average woman: not skinny, exactly (willowy, perhaps), but definitely not the Linda Hamilton/ Sigourney Weaver model. She kept her hair tied back, her makeup strictly practical … and she did _not_ look fifteen …!

He probably wouldn't underestimate her, not if he'd been around Slayers. At the same time, though he had promptly deferred to the hint of challenge she'd tossed out, he didn't really seem intimidated, either. Not a problem; the main thing was that he not talk down to her, and so far he'd shown no sign of any such inclination.

Unless he was putting on a big act (and she wouldn't rule out the possibility, but it didn't seem likely), he was just as annoyed at this "intervention" as she was. So, she'd play out whatever scenario they worked up together, get back to the U.S. of A., and continue the process of figuring out just what she'd do once she said goodbye to Kiddie Kamp for Slayers.

At this point, all she knew was that it wouldn't be what _they_ wanted.

~ – ~ – ~

"Let me make some guesses here," Xander said, "and when I'm done, you can tell me how close I got and where I missed."

Leigh shrugged. "Fine by me."

"Okay, then." Xander pondered for a moment, then began. "So, your life went something like this. You've always been high-energy, hardly ever sick, plenty of bumps and bruises 'cause you've got a daredevil streak, but you always bounced back fast. Mostly you just felt _good_ all the time … you know, body-good, and that physical zest kept you from getting too down even when other things in your life were maybe not so great.

"Then, let's say about twenty-six months ago, something changed. You _felt_ it change, like a wind going through you, something waking up inside you. Everything was different, you knew it even though you didn't know what it was or what it meant. And that was even before the dreams started.

"You probably didn't realize right away just how much stronger you were, 'cause it was like extra gears got added to what was already there. Go to open a jar of peanut butter, you open the jar; may have been surprised how easy it was, but you didn't crunch the glass in your fist or anything like that. It wasn't till you tried to do something you couldn't do before, or _could_ do but just barely, that you started learning how much the limits had shifted.

"Now, location. Phoenix isn't as big OR as flaky as L.A., and I haven't heard about any Hellmouths in Arizona, so you wouldn't start running into supernatural creepy-crawlers right away. It would happen sooner or later, though; Slayer instincts come with the package, you'd have started noticing things other people didn't, plus there's something about the Chosen that attracts weirdness. Like gravity or magnetism, the lightweights get moved first but they all feel it, and more and more of 'em respond as time goes by. You don't sound like you've been a 'trainee' more than a month or so, so you've had at least two years to watch things get stranger and stranger. Not vampires at first, probably, unless there was already a nest established in your hometown, but vampires definitely would have started showing up. There's more of 'em around, and they jazz to that Slayer allure more than most other things do."

He paused to give her a quizzical eyebrow. "Yes," Leigh said. "I've dealt with vampires."

"All to the good. Now, twenty years ago somebody in your shoes wouldn't have had any resources. Suddenly you're ten or a dozen times as strong as you used to be, your reaction speed is triple human norm, you're having nightmares that start to come true, and who the heck can you ask about it? With the Internet, though, you can check all kinds of possibilities, follow threads you wouldn't have run across any other way. And, if you caught a break — say, if one of the vamps you met called you 'Slayer' before you introduced him to a pointy piece of wood — and you Googled 'vampire' and 'Slayer' together, you might have started to get some hints about what was going on in your life.

"And, unless I've totally missed the boat — which, wow, _that's_ never happened to me — a month or so after you really hit your stride with the 'Net searches, some people came to call on you. Totally polite, broad daylight, all very proper … but there would have been at least two girls your age, watching you really casual while a couple of people trying to act like schoolteachers explained to you that you were part of something bigger, and if you wanted to learn more you'd need to attend this special program in Cleveland."

"They were like me," Leigh said. "The girls, I mean. There were three of them, and I knew as soon as I saw them. One I might not have noticed, but they all had … I don't know, the same _something."_

Xander nodded. "Yep, hard to miss once you've seen it the first time."

"You could know all this if they'd sent you a report on me," Leigh observed. "But you're saying not. So it sounds like what happened in my case is just … standard procedure."

"Not exactly," Xander said. "I know _their_ procedures, and I've seen it happen with other people. Some of it you told me yourself, some of it follows from you being here. I was around when the idea was first floated to tag any 'Net searches that used certain keywords … Anyway, that's what I'd guess. So, where'd I score and where was I just totally in the wrong playing field?"

Leigh considered it. "You were a little off here and there," she said. "And there were some important things you didn't mention. But I can't say you were flat wrong anywhere."

"A personal best," Xander said, nodding. " 'And Harris mounts the podium to the cheers of multitudes … and, yes, here to present the medal is Amy Yip herself —' " He shook his head. "Sorry. Back now. Okay, I wasn't just showing off, I wanted you to see I understand how these things go. You wouldn't be here unless there was something different about your case, though, so lay it on me. All ears here."

"You were right about the time," Leigh said. "Twenty-six months ago, almost exactly. And that was just how it felt, that 'wind blowing through me', and at the same time there's no _way_ to explain what it was like. I knew it had to mean something; what, I had no idea, but I knew it was important.

"There wasn't really time for any dreams to start before I got my first clue. Two days after I felt the wind, I was at a shopping center, and I saw this moron in a jacked-up four-wheel drive pulling out of his parking space, only he was boosted so high he couldn't see in his rear mirror that he was about to back over a kid in a stroller. Just like that I was out of my car and across the lot and pulled the stroller out of the way, and then everybody was yelling for awhile, and finally it all calmed down because nobody had actually got hurt."

"Slayer speed," Xander said, nodding.

"I guess," Leigh said. "But that wouldn't have tipped me off by itself. When I got back to my car … Well, I'd been having trouble with my seat belt. Every now and then it would stick, and I'd have to work the buckle awhile to get it to let go. When I got back to my car, the belt was lying out on the pavement. I'd gone straight through it, I'd torn the mounting bolt right out of the frame, and I hadn't even noticed."

"And that," Xander said, "is what, in the supernatural biz, we call a clue."

"Yeah. So I started testing myself. I was like Bruce Willis in _Unbreakable_, I couldn't stack enough plates on the weight bar to find my limit. I ran a three-minute mile on my first try. I went to jump over a wall, saw I wasn't going to make it, switched to a handspring vault in mid-air, cleared it easy. Ten-foot wall."

"I know the drill," Xander said. "One minute, mild-mannered high school student. The next, Wonder Woman without the bustier." He gave her a sideways glance. "There was no bustier, was there? 'Cause that would just be … extreme. And wrong."

"The situation didn't really seem to call for spandex," Leigh said. "But it did shake me, kind of. That 'body-good' feeling you mentioned, it was charged up higher than ever, I _loved_ being able to do what I could do now. Loved being strong. And at the same time, I knew there had to be more to it."

" 'With great power comes great responsibility,' " Xander agreed.

"Thank you, Uncle Ben." Leigh shook her head. "No, more along the lines of, _Oh crap, if I'm a superhero all of a sudden, when do the super-villains start popping up?_"

"Oh," Xander said. "Yeah. Right. That."

"So the stuff you said I'd have started to notice, I was probably watching for that a little sooner than most." Leigh sighed. "Didn't take long for it to start happening, either."

"And you carried it on your own for close to two years." Xander pulled at his chin. "That has to have been heavy baggage. And I don't mean standard teen angst, either, I'm talking _Freddy-Meets-Jason_, stop-the-world-I-want-to-get-off badness and isolation."

"Isolation?" Leigh scoffed. "Going through vampires, succubi, mind-controlling Mixtec masks, all without anybody to share it with? Getting by on three hours' sleep a day, sneaking out every night, trying to convince my parents _and_ my little brother that I wasn't doing drugs or turning tricks on the boulevard? Seeing my best friend killed and turned by some Eurotrash lunatic, and having to stake her myself because I hadn't been able to just _tell_ her, flat-out, exactly what kind of bad news this Gutrick character really was? Come on, how could any of that possibly make me feel alienated?"

Xander had gone very still. Alarmed by her outburst? "Your best friend," he said at last. "That's a rough one. I'm sorry."

Leigh turned hard eyes on him. "Don't try to pretend you understand."

"I won't." He didn't sound offended, but not apologetic either. "So then, after all that, the others showed up with their little recruiting pitch. What was that like?"

"A relief," Leigh said. "A door opening. I'd been doing this all by myself, and now here was somebody else who knew. I was sold before they started talking. Maybe not the entire program, I don't take a lot on trust, but at least I'd have a chance to get a clear idea about what was going on."

"Then you get there," Xander prompted. "Slayer Central. Major adjustment, I'm guessing."

"It was ridiculous," Leigh spat. "It was a joke. It was fucking _nursery school._ Two solid years I'd been doing this, and they acted like I had to be taught how to hold a stake. It wasn't even that they thought I didn't know anything; no, they acted like everything I knew was _wrong,_ and I had to forget it all and start over."

"Nice to hear the new Watchers aren't neglecting the old traditions," Xander said. "So how long before you got fed up and told 'em where to stick it?"

She had been building a nice load of wrath, but at his lack of opposition, some of it seeped out of her. "Little under three weeks. I said I was sick of baby games. They said they couldn't change the whole program just for me. I said, then I'm outta here. They said they'd book me a flight."

"And they sent you here instead." Xander drew a slow breath. "I'm not totally on board with how they do things, but you need to understand, they're not really as dumb as they seem."

"Maybe not, but they blew it with me from Day One."

"They had to start over cold," Xander explained. "Make it up as they went. The old Council was gone — most of it, anyhow — and the whole situation had changed, so they couldn't just keep going by the way things had always been done. At the same time, they had a big job to do and they had to start _right away,_ so they had to fall back on a lot of the old models till they had time to come up with something better. Plus, you'd be sort of a special problem for 'em."

"Yeah? Explain that part to me."

"Well, most of the first wave of new Chosen, they found pretty quick; the ones that they didn't get to till later, those usually hadn't run into a lot of mystical problems, because the ones that _did_ generally didn't make it very long without backup. So with you, they had somebody who on one hand didn't know near enough, and on the other knew way too much. They put you in with a bunch of newbies 'cause they didn't know how else to handle you, and you got tired of it before they could come up with anything that'd fit you better."

"And then shipped me off to Scotland because _they_ dropped the ball." Leigh fixed her host with a new, challenging look. "But why you, exactly? Where do you fit in all this? You talk like you're not really with them, but you seem to know a lot, and you're the one they think of when they hit a hitch. What's _your_ deal?"

Xander laughed. "I'm kinda like you. I mean, I don't fit any of the molds, either, and nobody really knows what to do with me." His expression sobered. "You ever have your parents lecture you on how easy kids have it now? 'Cause, you know, they grew up without any Internet or DVDs or iPods, and everybody had to learn to drive a standard transmission, and the USSR was always kicking up trouble? Well, where Slayerdom is concerned, I come from exactly that kind of Bad Old Days, only times twenty. Back when there was only one Slayer — okay, two for a while, but trust me, no improvement — and apocalypses came once or twice a year, and … Anyway, bad. I was there, and I didn't die, so when the Council got blown up and the Sunnydale crew had to organize a new one, I was on the ground floor. Then I went and did other stuff for awhile, 'cause _not_ upper management here, and then I put in for vacation time, and then somebody decided dropping you on my doorstep would do us both some good."

"Really?" Leigh studied him doubtfully. "What, are you in some kind of career burnout?"

"Hey, everybody's got issues," Xander said. "And when you're surrounded by women, they all seem to want to mother you — which, strangely enough, never figured into _any_ of my major fantasies — and when you come right down to it, this business is really not about me."

"Right," Leigh said. "Got it. I'm the problem child. So does all this opening up and sharing get us any closer to figuring out what we're going to _do?"_

"I don't know," Xander said. "Maybe. I'll have to think on it for awhile." He half-turned away from her, dug around in a backpack for a moment, held up an aluminum can. "Root beer?"


	2. Part 2

Part II

There was a long silence following the exchange of information. Xander had a second root beer — Leigh declined — and at the end of it he said, "I think I need to go into town for awhile."

"Town?" Leigh sat up. "Where?"

"There's a sort of a road on the other side of that hill," Xander said, pointing. "Just a dirt track, and a little town about four miles to the southwest. I've got a bicycle here, and it's not too rough a trip, even uphill. There'll be things I need to check out, and people I want to talk to … I'd say three, maybe four hours before I get back to you, it shouldn't be much past noon, you'll be fine —"

"I'm coming with you," Leigh said.

"Well … no." Xander held up his hands. "Don't get worked up, now, okay? But I can't have you coming along. What I'm thinking I could maybe set up, no way I can manage it if you're there. I can't make you stay here, I know that, but unless you do, I won't go."

Leigh wasn't pleased, and didn't try to hide it. "What is it you want to 'set up', and how will it help me?"

"I can't say." He shook his head. "Look, I'm not shining you on, it's just I don't _know_ yet. There are a lot of different ways we could play it, and things depend on other things, and I'll start finding all that out when I get to town. Situation like this, you have to deal with it as it is, not try to force it to be something else. So I need to make the trip, and eyeball the scene, and then maybe I can give you something solid."

"Fine," Leigh told him, maintaining her temper by only a small effort. "Well, give me some idea what you're aiming at. Broad outlines, general theory; even if you haven't decided on the specifics yet, at least tell me what you're basically hoping to accomplish."

"They sent you here for a reason," Xander said. "I'm supposed to do something or decide something where you're concerned, like I'm the Magic 8-Ball of newly-located Slayers. _You_ know better, _I_ know better, but they're expecting something so we'll give them something. Some symbolic gesture, whatever will satisfy them so you can go back to the States and I can go back to watching the sunsets. Doesn't really matter what it is, as long as we can sell it, and right now I need to go see what I have to work with."

She didn't like it, but her options were limited, and he genuinely did seem to want her gone as much as she did. Rather than simply give in, she changed the subject. "Sunnydale, you said."

He favored her with a quizzical frown. "Yeah?"

"I've heard that name. When I first started doing Web searches, there was a site —"

Xander held up his hand again, and with the other he massaged his temples as if trying to ward off a migraine. "Don't say it. Don't say the name of the site." He looked up at her with a pained grimace. "That thing … If you believe me on nothing else, believe this: 70% of what you see there is flat lies, and the rest is twisted around so bad you'd never be able to sift the facts from the crap. Yes, I'm from Sunnydale, now the location of California's newest crater lake … well, saltwater inlet, actually. Yes, it was a crazy place. No, the Website That Shall Not Be Named is _not_ the place you want to look if you ever hope to learn the truth. It'll just gunk up your brain with really disturbing sludge."

Leigh regarded him with open, arch skepticism. "So the guy who stopped a Hallowe'en apocalypse by channeling a Delta Force commando, and then seduced three consecutive Slayers, you wouldn't know anything about him?"

_"Jesus,_ no!" Xander shuddered. "I've heard the stories. They're right up there with the ones about SuperJonathan: good for a laugh, if your taste runs to tabloid trash, but not to be remotely confused with reality."

"Yeah, yeah." Leigh waved it off. "Okay, go into town. I'll stay. Don't make me wait."

Xander came to his feet. "I'll get back quick as I can. There's, um, I've got crackers and peanut butter in the backpack, and cans of tuna; you know, stuff that doesn't have to be refrigerated. Feel free." He paused at the door of the hut. "If you wanted to leave while I'm gone, that'd be another thing I couldn't stop. But no telling how the others would react if you did, so I'm just saying, let me take a shot at coming up with something, okay?"

"I said I'd wait," Leigh replied impatiently. "I'll _wait._ Just make it snappy."

Xander nodded, and hurried outside. Seconds later Leigh heard a faint clattering that had to be the bicycle he'd mentioned. She shook her head. "Delta Force," she said to herself. "Like there was ever a chance I'd believe _that_ one."

~ – ~ – ~

He was as good as his word, returning before the sun had begun to tip toward the horizon. "I brought some treats," he announced as he dismounted the bicycle. He extracted a cloth sack from the basket on the front, held it up. "Twinkies, Ho-Hos, some chips. This kind of stuff doesn't travel well, I usually just nosh on it where I can find it and then move on, but I figured since I had a guest —"

"Chips are okay," Leigh said. "I'm not much for Yellow Dye #5. But do you always do your food shopping based on durability?"

It had actually been a minor outburst of random pique, but Xander grinned. "Hey, the cans of soup are _luxuries_. Do a twenty-day trek with nothing but beef jerky and iodine tablets, you get a whole different concept of 'bare minimum'."

"Iodine?" Leigh said. "Why iodine?"

"You add it to the water," Xander explained. "Kills bacteria and parasites. And tastes horrible, and messes with your digestion, but not near as bad as you'd have if you _didn't_ use iodine."

"In Scotland?" Leigh wondered.

"Nah, here I just buy bottled. Like I said, this is supposed to be vacation for me."

Questions, obviously, but Leigh decided to save them for later. Or never. "So what did you learn?" she asked him.

"More possibilities than anything else." Xander looked to her. "The way you told it, they routed you to me when you tried to quit. I'm thinking the simplest solution is for you to go back, act all penitent, and see their program through to the end. You don't have to buy it, just play along."

"I don't think so," Leigh said.

"Seriously, I want you to think about it." Up to now, Xander had evinced glumness, chagrin, irritation at his absent colleagues, and disarming humor; now he wore what Leigh decided must be his 'earnest face'. "These people aren't kidding around; they see what they're doing as a sacred mission, even if most of 'em wouldn't use those words, and they're not gonna let you walk away till you've heard the whole spiel. You're probably wishing right now you'd gone ahead and taken the blue pill … but it doesn't work that way, not for Slayers, and they'll keep after you. Long run, it'll take less time and hassle to just do it their way, hear 'em out and then make up your own mind."

"Forget it," Leigh told him. "That won't be happening."

Xander nodded as if unsurprised, and his smile seemed shadowed by something else. "Okay, it was a thought. I figured I'd at least _try_ to do it the easy way."

"So what's the hard way?" Leigh asked. "Or did your imagination run dry at 'go back to kindergarten'?"

"No, I've still got a few possibilities we could look at." Xander shook his head. "Why they decided I was the Obi-wan of the Slayer scene … Well, let me get something to eat, and then I'll start laying it out for you."

He had another can of soup, along with the inevitable root beer; she munched absently on some of the chips before resealing the bag. When he was done, he looked to her and said, "All right, I guess it's time to get to it. I'd say the first thing I need to know is, what makes you different from other Slayers?"

"I thought we'd already covered that," Leigh said.

"No, sorry, I didn't say it right. What I mean is, why are they _treating_ you different? You don't fit their program, but they've run across that before. There are other things they could have done when you said you wanted to leave, but instead they sent you to me. That shouldn't have been their first choice — heck, I shouldn't have been their _fifth_ choice — so I have to wonder what it was about you that made them decide to go this route."

"Can't help you there," Leigh answered firmly. "I've already told you what I know."

Xander regarded her with some doubt. "There's not _anything_ that might offer any clues?"

"I've told you what I know," she repeated. "If that's not enough, then it's not enough."

"Mm." He nodded. "Then maybe I should be asking another question. Why are you so against the idea of just finishing out their precious program, giving 'em what they want and then moving on? I can understand you not liking it, but why not just _do_ it if it's the fastest way to get 'em off your back?"

"Why should I?" Leigh challenged him. "Why should I give them anything? Nobody asked if I wanted this. Their program, sure, they made that sound like I had a choice — only I wonder now what would have happened if I'd said no, thanks — but where did I get a choice about being a Slayer in the first place? _I_ was the one who had to deal when the whole world went nuts around me. And I did, I made it work, and then they come in all know-it-all, laying on rules that don't make any damn sense, _preaching_ at me over things you can see they don't have the first idea about —!"

She stopped. Xander waited. At last he said, "What kinds of things?"

Leigh shook her head. "Things. Nothing in particular. It's just the whole attitude. I'd had enough, and I said so."

Xander watched her, considering. "You won't go back."

"Not a chance," she confirmed. "No way."

"And you won't tell me why. Even though there _is_ a reason."

"I've told you what I know," she said for the third time.

"Yeah." Xander sighed. "Nineteen years old, and you've got all the answers. You think they don't have _anything_ to teach you? You think you can take on the world by yourself?"

"I did okay before they found me," Leigh said. "In fact, I'd have to say I did _better_ when it was just me."

"Oh, yeah," Xander said. "You're a Slayer, baddest of all bad-asses." His expression was suddenly harder than she would have believed that face could hold. "Do you have any idea how many little girls like you I've buried?"

Leigh laughed. _"You?"_

"I'm not saying I took 'em down myself," Xander said. "But Slayers aren't invincible. They die, like anybody else. From being outmatched. From being overconfident. Sometimes just from bad luck, or maybe the thing they're fighting gets exactly the wrong moment of _good_ luck —"

"I've heard the lectures," Leigh said. "And you know what? every one of them came from somebody who wasn't a Slayer, or from a Slayer who hadn't had to face half the things I did."

Xander sat silently, studying her with a gaze that never quite focused on her and yet gave the eerie impression of missing nothing. "You're right on one thing," he said. "Lectures won't do it. Come with me."

He stood and walked away, toward one of the craggy rock ridges that looked down over the sheep meadows. After a moment she followed. He stopped a few feet back from the edge. "You see that spot down there?" he asked. "There at the base, where those wildflowers are, the little patch shaped like Angelina Jolie's lips?"

"I see it," she said.

Xander picked up a loose stone, held it out over the edge. "Keep watching that spot," he said, and released the stone.

Leigh kept her eyes on the spot indicated, Xander had taken a half-step back as he let go of the stone and she moved up into the space he had vacated, watching as the stone struck a few inches from the patch of flowers —

There was a harsh crackling sound, a tremendous impact squarely in the center of her spine, and the world went dark.

~ – ~ – ~

She was back in the hut when she woke, and she lay for several minutes on the rough cot, mind drifting dazedly. Then reality came back to her in an instant, and she heaved herself upright and out the door, looking around for her host, fists clenched and aching to dispense retribution. He wasn't in sight, but just outside the door she saw a sheet of paper anchored by another of the loose stones. She picked it up and read:

_Stun gun, charge calibrated for Slayer physiology.  
That's one.  
Come and get me._

The bicycle was gone. On the ground between the hut and the low ridge where he had sandbagged her, an arrow (formed of the ubiquitous stones) pointed the way: east-northeast, if placement of the sun meant true west. Leigh went back into the hut, found the bottled water Xander had mentioned, drank one bottle. Then, carrying another, she set out running in the direction indicated by the arrow.

She could have headed for the town instead. She had considered it: not due to fear — if he'd wanted to hurt her, he could have done it easily while she was out — but just from unwillingness to play whatever game he might have in mind. He had stung her pride, however, added to which was that he was probably right about the new Council organization continuing to dog her. Much simpler, and far more gratifying, to convince _him_ of her capabilities. The fact that doing so would include showing him emphatically that blindsiding her didn't mean he'd beaten her … well, that didn't suck, either.

She didn't push at full speed; he wouldn't have gone far, he intended that she overtake him. She just didn't want to wait any longer than she had to. While she ran, she made herself assess what had happened. Okay, he'd gotten her, taken her cold. _"That's one."_ No point in denying it … but what had he accomplished by it? So far as she could see, he'd only managed to 1) get about an hour's lead on her, and 2) tick her off thoroughly.

Unable to find a satisfying answer, she let it go. She would ask when she caught up with him … and he'd answer, count on it.

He was waiting at a relative low spot, under a stand of trees just on the other side of the road. The bicycle was leaning against one of the trees, and Leigh realized that, though he had sent her overland, Xander had made better time by following a loop of the road. "So," he called to her as she came down the slope of the hill. "What makes you different from other Slayers?"

She stopped, maybe fifteen yards distant. "I made my own way," she told him. "I made it as a Slayer _without_ them, and they just can't stand that."

Xander shook his head. "Nope. That's not it."

"Really?" Leigh took a step toward him. "What makes you so sure?"

"There's something you're not telling me," Xander said. He reached out to take hold of a staff that rested against the tree next to him: six feet of polished hardwood, tapering slightly to either end, the classical _bo_ of several different martial arts. "Whatever it is, it goes beyond solo Slayer ops. You're hiding something, and _that's_ what I want. So, one more time: what makes you different? What's your secret?"

She snorted scornfully. "Not asking much, are you?" She eyed the staff, and her mouth twisted into a sneer. "You expect me to open up on the first date, you'll need more wood than that."

"Well, ya works with what ya gots." Xander slid into a slanting stance, rotating the staff to direct one end toward her. "Ready whenever you are, macho gal."

Instinct, ancient foreknowledge rather than learning, told her that he held the staff with easy familiarity, but not any legacy of formal training. It didn't matter. There was more to this guy than showed on the surface, but he could have been the greatest staff-fighter who ever lived and it still wouldn't have been enough. He couldn't match her for speed, no living human could, besides which she could go straight _through_ his attack if she wanted, take any hit full-on and still have more than enough left to break his weapon and him. "This is going to hurt you a lot more than it does me," she said, and charged.

He stood his ground (just meant she'd reach him a fraction of a second sooner than if he ran), and she gathered herself for a running leap and the mossy ground gave way beneath her feet. She stumbled, reached, but her hands, too, went through the earth before her and she went down, there was a deep reverberating _Two-o-ong!_ and a shadow fell over her. She fought her way upright, too late, folds of net snared and tangled her, and somehow Xander reached through the close-set cords. The stun-gun crackled, her muscles locked, and she went down again.

Xander squatted beside her. "That's two," he said. He must have dialed down the charge this time, because she was still conscious, but no amount of will could give her control of her body. "Weird, isn't it? You Slayer, me human, but I've taken you down twice now. Two times I could have killed you, if that's what I wanted. But how can this be? You're the one who has all the answers, and I'm one of the bunch that doesn't have anything to teach you. Yep, it's a mystery."

"Bite me," she gasped. Meaningless, humiliating, but she wouldn't surrender.

"Not me," he told her. "Totally not my deal. But you'd be a tasty treat for a lot of things out there. So I guess that means you're alive by luck: luck that I don't have a sweet tooth for Slayer yumminess."

He leaned in toward her. "I'm trying to build up to a point here, but you're not exactly an eager student, so I don't know if I'm reaching you. I've asked it before, but you need to seriously think about answering. _What makes you different?"_

Then the charge hit again, and again she was gone.

~ – ~ – ~

This time he had pulled her in beneath the trees, with the netting folded under her for padding. As before, her awakening was accompanied by some minutes of mental blurriness, and she had to study the scene for some time before her mind would function well enough to make any sense of it. Finally the fragmented parts of her clicked together, and she looked around her with perplexity and slow understanding.

Trenches. Trenches had been dug in the ground leading to his position: three of them, two and a half feet across, a foot and a half deep, and then thin sheets of moss laid over a framework of light branches to conceal them. Not a trap, not even much of an obstacle, but enough to trip her during a rash charge; and, in the seconds before she recovered, sapling catapults had launched the weighted edges of the net that had tangled her.

This time there was no note. Only the arrow.

Leigh had been angry before. Now, no question about it, she was shaken. When had he had time to set this up? Certainly not while she was unconscious at the hut, not counting his own travel time. So he must have arranged it in advance. He'd been ahead of her the whole time. He'd already beaten her, _twice_. Her mind shied away from the thought of what the fast-maturing cruitl larvae would have done to her if she'd lost focus even for a second, or how quickly she would have died if she'd let Gutrick slip so disastrously inside her guard …

This guy was better than good. He was terrifying. And he didn't even seem to be trying hard.

Disturbed, chastened, and — much as she hated to admit it — frightened, Leigh followed the arrow.

It had been set beside the road, so she stayed on the road. It helped to not have to keep a bearing, to let her thoughts run loose. He had kept coming back to it. The secret. The thing that made her different. He wouldn't quit, she could see that. He'd stay after her until he had it from her.

And she wouldn't, _couldn't_ tell him.

~ – ~ – ~

This time, when she saw him, she stopped. He had stayed with the road, and he sat now with his knees up, leaning back against a grassy swell of earth by the roadside. He was in the open, almost half a mile away, and even with eyesight somewhat better than would have been rated perfect in a human, Leigh couldn't positively confirm that it was him. All the same, she had no doubt. As she watched, he raised one hand to his face in a familiar motion, and a glint of sun off a smooth surface told her he was taking a drink from a water bottle or canteen or soda can.

There was nothing within several hundred feet of him that could conceal a snare. Probably he had picked the spot precisely to allow her to see this. It was a challenge: _nope, no reprise, I'll hit you with something brand-new … and, even knowing, you still won't be able to stop it._

Maybe so. But she'd be a fool to ignore past experience. She started toward him, determined that, even if she couldn't protect against the unforeseen, she would at least be on guard for what she _did_ know.

He was human. He was unarmed except for the staff. She had killed things with ten times his strength, a hundred times his ferocity. So why did she feel like someone walking naked toward a hungry lion?

No, worse. A lion, she could handle.

As she came within a quarter-mile of his position, he stood unhurriedly. Leigh slowed but kept on, watching him closely. He picked up the staff, leaning on it rather than taking any kind of martial stance. Maybe he was just being as cautious as she was trying to be; even at a full-out sprint, it would take her at least thirty seconds to reach him, but being already on his feet would give him that much more lead time … She didn't believe it. He had a reason, there was _always_ a reason for whatever he did, and she kept her eyes fixed on him as she continued her approach, alert for any motion that might warn of another harsh surprise.

The impact drove her breath from her lungs, slamming her to the side with the brutal force of a giant fist, and she was struck again before her brain fully registered the booming report that had accompanied the first blow. Then a third, and she was down and she'd been _shot!_ She pushed herself to hands and knees, desperate, bewildered, and again was smashed flat, and finally she understood that she was being fired on from three sides, but her body was too wrecked to act on the knowledge. She tried anyhow, being beaten was one thing but quitting was something else entirely, and was rewarded with yet another round, this one directly into the pit of her stomach, and she vomited explosively and went face-down in the road.

He was beside her, Xander, he turned her to her side and watched with what she could recognize as anxiety until, after forever, her ravaged diaphragm relaxed and she could breathe again. Then, letting out a breath of his own, Xander said, "So what is it? How are you different from other Slayers? What's the thing you don't want anybody to know?"

And Leigh, vanquished at last — not just beaten, but _defeated_ — lying in the dust of the road and in her own vomit, began helplessly to cry.


	3. Part 3

Part III

He sent the three shooters away (one man in his twenties and one who looked to be past fifty, along with a fierce-eyed redheaded girl even younger than Leigh) with thanks and assurances that he'd be fine, he could take it from here, no really, he'd be okay and he'd see them at the pub later in the week. By this time Leigh had recovered enough to sit without aid. As the three started back down the road, the redhead with a last parting glare in her direction, Leigh swallowed a few times to clear the bile from her throat, and asked faintly, "Rubber bullets?"

"Something like that." Xander came to squat next to her. "Flexible baton rounds, fired from shotguns, and higher-powered than usual 'cause, hey, _Slayer_. One to the head might kill a normal person; you probably coulda taken even that, but I told them to stick to torso shots."

"Thanks," Leigh said, and was surprised to realize that she had meant it without sarcasm. "Okay, go on and say it."

He studied her, puzzled but not concerned. "Say what?"

" 'That's three.' "

With a shrug, he said, "What for? You already know." He stood up. "Let's see if you can walk yet. We need to be heading back to the hut."

She could walk. Every part of her hurt, she had bruises the size of salad plates, but she knew from experience that these would fade quickly. As they started back the way they had come, Xander pushing the bicycle along between them, Leigh asked, "Who were they? The three with the shotguns, I mean. At first I thought they must be from the Council, but that just doesn't feel right."

"They're local," Xander said. "When I first got here, I helped 'em with a little werewolf problem. At least, that's what they thought it was, it turned out to be something else … which was good, 'cause it meant we could kill it without them having to lose one of their own. They were happy for a chance to pay me back."

As was common with him, his answer had raised other questions. "You handled it yourself? You didn't try to bring in a Slayer?"

Xander's grin was rueful and reminiscent. "It was one of those 'no time, no choice' situations. Exactly my least favorite thing in the world."

_Was I one of those?_ Leigh wondered. Aloud she said, "So what comes next? Now that I've failed your test."

He laughed softly. "That wasn't a test," he told her. "It was a lesson."

"Well, you made your point. I thought I was hot stuff, and I'm not. That's it, then? Back to pre-school?"

"They want you back," he agreed. "And I think it's a good idea."

The two of them walked for several minutes without speaking. Then Leigh said, "You're him, aren't you?"

"Huh?" Xander asked. "Him who?"

"The trainees talk," Leigh said. "The people in the program try to keep everything official, but most of the instructors aren't much older than we are. Rumors float around. One of them is about what they do with a rogue Slayer. One who's turned … bad. We know they can't let that go — I mean, we're supposed to _protect_ people against supernatural menaces, and an outlaw Slayer would be pretty damn menacing — and one of the explanations is … a guy." She looked at him. "Pretty vague. Just a name: the Carpenter. If you make his list, well, he builds you a coffin, and then he puts you in it."

"The Carpenter," Xander repeated. "Oh my God."

"Now, I'm thinking there can't be enough rogue Slayers to make that a full-time job," Leigh went on. "It stands to reason, a guy like that, he should also be pretty good at slapping down somebody that got too full of herself."

Xander stopped and faced her. "Is that what you think I am? I've been working with Slayers since I was sixteen. Killing one … that is absolutely the last thing I would ever want to do. The _last_ thing."

"Well, speaking as a Slayer," Leigh said, "if a job like that had to be done — I mean, no choice, had to — I think I'd want it done by somebody who doesn't like it. Who feels about it the way you do."

She could almost see him pushing away the anger, stuffing it back. "All right," Xander returned. "Say the guy exists. Say I'm him. Say he does the job of … that job. Would you be a case for him?"

"I don't know," Leigh said. Face and voice were controlled, neither revealing nor evading anything. "Would I?"

Xander shook his head. "You talk about rogue Slayers. I've _seen_ it. Not the way the old Council meant it — for them, 'rogue' meant 'won't do what we tell her' — but the real thing. I'm not talking adorable bad girl, romantic outlaw, any of that; no, when I say 'rogue' I mean 'killer'. Killing _people_. Enjoying it. Bragging about it, and laughing at the look on your face when she talks about what she's going to do next."

"Killing people," Leigh repeated tonelessly.

"All Slayers are killers," Xander said. He started walking again, and Leigh fell in beside him. "I mean, they're _named_ for it. But like you said, they're protectors, too: they protect people, ordinary humans, by killing the things that threaten us. They're designed that way, best I can tell. When a Slayer kills a regular human being … well, it can get bad."

"She goes crazy," Leigh said. "Right? That's in the rumor mill, too."

"It can happen." Xander sighed. "It's a … stress. Major stress. Trigger event. If there are other things going on at the same time, yeah, it can push a girl over the edge." He turned to face her again. "It's not black-and-white. The best Slayer I've ever known — maybe the best there's ever been — killed men in combat. They were coming at her with weapons, she was defending someone else, she didn't have time to go easy on them. She dealt. But, yeah, it seems to hit Slayers harder than most people."

"You said she was defending somebody?"

"Yep. You never wanted to get between her and her sister." He laughed. " 'Course, the sister turned out to be pretty tough, herself."

"So it makes a difference if … if it's to protect someone else. Somebody innocent."

"It makes a difference, yeah. Big difference." Xander was surveying her with that eerily incomplete gaze. "I'm not saying it'd amount to a free pass, but you get a little slack if you're doing what you have to do to save your best friend." He paused. "Or parents." Another beat. "Or little brother."

He had scored, and Leigh knew he could see it, but she nodded thoughtfully. "So, hypothetically speaking, if a Slayer who had taken that kind of … extreme measures … kept having nightmares about it, would that be a sign that she was cracking up?"

Xander shrugged. "Could just be conscience. I'd think that, hypothetically speaking, I'd be more interested in how far she'd go to avoid facing what she'd done. Or how likely she'd be to do it again."

They resumed walking. After a minute Leigh said, "Hypothetically speaking, I can't see how somebody who'd done that kind of thing could _ever_ stand to do it again." She tried to stop there, but the next words insisted on emerging. "Not unless she had absolutely no other choice."

"That sounds like a pretty good attitude for somebody like that to have." Xander's tone was casual, amiable. "Taking it seriously, but still realistic. I mean, she'd have some work to do, but it would be reassuring to know she seemed to have her head on straight." He gave her a sideways glance, a slight tilt to his mouth. " 'Course, if a Slayer went through something like that, dealt with those kinds of issues … it would have to make her different, wouldn't it?"

Leigh thought about that. "Enough to notice?"

"Enough that people used to working with Slayers might want to check it out. Some secrets are private business; some, you want to know what they mean."

"I can see that," Leigh said. "But, once there's an answer, would that be enough?"

"Well, the new Council people would want to keep working with our hypothetical Slayer. They'd really hate to see her get away. And sooner or later, she'd have to talk to somebody about it." Xander grinned at her. "If you mean would she get any fallout, though, probably not. Not if somebody filed a good report on her. Which I kinda think will happen."

"I think I'm tired of talking hypothetically," Leigh said. "But … I'd say this Slayer would probably be willing to give it a try."

Xander nodded. "And I'd say there would probably be a lot of people who'd be really glad to hear that."

~ – ~ – ~

When they reached the hut, Leigh looked around and asked, "How long till they pull me back?"

"Some of that's up to you," Xander said. "I can send 'em a notification that you're ready, but it doesn't have to be right away."

"I could stand to rest awhile first," Leigh acknowledged. "Do you have anything to drink besides root beer and bottled water?"

"Why would I need anything else?" Xander asked, in such a way that she couldn't even guess as to whether or not he was serious.

He popped a can, she opened a bottle. They sat in the shade, sipping and not speaking. "So," he said at last. "What will you be taking away from this frolicsome little seminar?"

"Besides bruises?" Leigh shook her head. "I don't know. For a while I had you slotted in with the rest of them, and I wasn't interested in what you had to say. When you suckered me, left me with the note and the arrow, I was mad. But …" She bit her lip. "Three times. You took me out three times, one right after another, and I never saw it coming. Not even when I was watching for it. I'd got used to being a big fish in a little pond, even when I was pulled in with the other Slayers I _knew_ I was better than them …" She stopped. "I was wrong. I'm not special at all."

"Hmm," Xander said. "Not exactly the point I was trying to put across."

"No? What, then?"

"Yeah, I aced you. Once by hitting you when you were looking the other way. Once by having a trap waiting for you. Once with help from friends you didn't know I had, with me so far away you weren't expecting _anything_ yet. I set you up from the start, I never gave you any kind of chance —"

"I know," Leigh said. "I _know_. You didn't even use magical weapons, you rubbed my face in it. Okay, I get it. Big bad super-strong female, can't even take on a regular human … I'm nothing. I get it."

"No, you don't. You're a Slayer, and not an ordinary one. You made it for two years with no Watcher, no backup, nobody to tell you the score, and you did it against some pretty heavy opposition. Even Bu– … even the Slayer Prime never had to pull that off. You _are_ special."

"But you still beat me," Leigh protested, not understanding. "Over and over."

"I beat you," Xander agreed. "But I never fought you. If I had, you'd have turned me into a smear on the landscape."

"I never got the chance."

He snorted. "I should say not! I made sure of it. You're a _Slayer_. I'll never be able to do what you can. Never." He paused. "But you can learn to do what I did."

Leigh discovered that her mouth was open. "I can?"

"Sure. Strategy. Deception. Coordination with other fighters. _That_ was what the lesson was about. I'm human, but I beat you. Use the same tactics, learn to focus on winning instead of on fighting, and _you'll_ be able to beat things that think they're invincible."

"I guess I could," Leigh said. "That … that makes sense."

"I've seen it done," Xander told her. "A time or two, I got to help."

"So … they wouldn't go through all this, if they didn't think I was worth it, would they?"

"We don't give up on any of our people," Xander said firmly. "Not if we can help it. But, yeah, you're worth it."

"I can't see why," Leigh said. "I'm not arguing with you, or putting myself down, or fishing for compliments. I just can't see it."

Xander sat quietly, looking straight ahead; Leigh, beside him, couldn't begin to guess his thoughts. At last he spoke.

"There's this girl," he said. "A Slayer. Ran away from her duty after her Watcher was killed. Ran away from it again after … well, lots of things. Let a vampire go when she could have dusted him, and he thanked her by killing somebody close to her. Bad taste in men: two of her boyfriends, well, add together their body counts and it'd probably hit five figures. Tried to kill herself. Tried to kill her friends and her sister, while she was whacked-out on drugs.

"Another one. Again, ran away after a dead Watcher. Killed a guy by mistake, and then killed at least two more deliberately. Tried to kill me. Tried to kill my friends. Threw in with a local demon wannabe and tried to help kill my whole graduating class. _Then,_ after a year of bed-rest, she kidnapped one of her replacement Watchers and tortured him for hours. Spent three years in prison, and then broke out.

"Last one. She got a taste of power, and liked it. She went looking for more. People tried to tell her she needed to be careful, but she just waved it off, _she_ knew best. Got into some really dark stuff, did some very creepy things. Started manipulating the people who cared about her: memory erasure, maybe even some mind control. Then she _really_ went off the rails. Hunted a man down, tortured him, flayed him alive, and then burned him alive. Which showstopper she followed by trying to kill everybody around her. And then everybody everywhere.

"Now: can you maybe tell me what those three women have in common?"

Leigh wet her lips. "Just as a guess, would they be three of the targets that … that the guy you say isn't you, would have had to go after? That's, you know, if he actually existed."

"Nope," Xander said. "They're three of the founders of the new Slayer-Watcher co-op."

Leigh's mouth was open again. It was becoming an embarrassing habit. "Are you serious?" she asked.

"They turned things around," Xander told her. "They made bad choices, but they learned from them. Now they're leaders. Thing is … a lot of what they've become, a lot of what they have to offer, comes straight from the bad stuff. It's given them a perspective they couldn't have gotten any other way. It makes them more than they would be without it."

Leigh regarded him doubtfully. "Are you saying I can do the same thing?"

"I'm saying it looks like you're most of the way there already." He put his hand on her shoulder: lightly, a gentle contact rather than possessive or intrusive. "Go back. Learn everything they can teach you. Anything that seems stupid or wrong, don't argue, just mark it down and think about how _you'd_ teach it. Because pretty soon, probably, you will be."

She thought about it. He withdrew his hand, sat beside her silently, gave her the time. "I think I'd like that," she said at last. "That sounds … really good. I think I'd like it a lot."

"There'll be others like you," Xander said. "Probably not many left from the first wave, but newer awakenings it's taken us time to catch up to. You know what that's like; it'd give you street cred with them, and let you understand them better than we might. Once you learn the rest of it, the stuff only a Council can teach, you'll be ready to change their world."

"I'm in," Leigh said. "I mean, it's good, you've sold me. Everything I hated, the reasons I wanted to leave … now you're telling me I get to do something about that, make it different for others like me. I'm in." She shook her head. "I can hardly believe it."

Xander grinned at her. "We need you," he said. "Big time. Believe _that."_

Another silence: relaxed, restful, companionable. The shadows were lengthening along the hillside, edging toward day's end.

Looking back on how consummately he had outmaneuvered her, Leigh found herself wondering if he had actually known all the facts about her before she had arrived; if, in fact, it had been a total set-up from the beginning. After some thought, she ruled it out. It just didn't seem to fit his style. He was masterful when it came to misdirection, but she could think of no instance where he had clearly lied to her.

She thought of his anger when she had spoken of the (still hypothetical) nemesis of rogue Slayers. Of his oft-expressed desire to continue with a badly needed vacation. Of the suggested possibility that she had been sent here as much for his sake as for her own. Even — though he had instantly denounced it — of some hints at the DarkSun Index website.

What was the truth about Xander Harris? She couldn't know … but she wanted to learn.

"There is one other thing I kind of wondered about," Leigh said, breaking the long quiet.

Xander glanced over at her. "Yeah?"

"This guy I mentioned to you," she said. "This mythical Carpenter. There was more than one set of rumors about him. I never bought either version, myself, but now I'm starting to think I might have been wrong about that, too."

He shook his head. "Sorry, not following you."

"Well, there were some who said the real reason he was called the Carpenter was because he was really good at nailing Slayers."

Xander had caught the tone behind the words, and his expression went from quizzical to no expression at all. "Nailing," he repeated. "As in —?"

Leigh nodded confirmation. "Lot of speculation about _that_ after lights-out, I can tell you."

"And now," Xander said firmly, "we have left the bogeyman behind and moved directly into bodice-ripper fantasy."

"I don't know." Leigh shifted next to him on the bench, turning more toward him without actually moving closer. "I can see how it could happen."

"I can't."

The finality was unmistakable. Leigh nodded again, accepting it. After a moment she asked, "Is it because you're responsible for me right now?"

"That'd be a lot of it, yeah."

"And the … issues … you mentioned; the reason you wanted a vacation, the reason they tossed a problem your way to pull you back into the game; would that figure in?"

Xander sighed. "I'd have to say that would probably cover most of the rest of it."

She nodded. "So how would it be if we ran into each other again, say in a year or two? Once I was past probationer status, and you'd had time to get past some of your … issues?"

"Things might be different then," Xander said. He looked to her. "Or they might not."

"Nicely indefinite." Leigh smiled. "But I think maybe I can live with that."

She shifted back, so that they were again sitting side by side, looking out over the sheep meadows. They remained that way while the evening gave way to twilight, and the twilight to dusk.

_—_

end

* * *

_Special acknowledgment:_ This story is original, but the notion of Xander as the executioner of rogue Slayers (and spoken of in whispered rumors as a warning) was something I saw by Lori Bush in her story, "How to Be Dead". Though I called him 'the Carpenter' rather than 'the Enforcer', she nonetheless used the concept before I did.


End file.
